Nightfire
Nightfire is a first-person shooter video game based on Ian Fleming's British secret agent James Bond. It was developed by Eurocom for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Xbox video game consoles. Gearbox Software developed the game for Windows, which Aspyr later ported to the Mac. It was published by Electronic Arts in 2002. In 2003 EA released Nightfire for the Game Boy Advance this time developed by JV Games. Plot Summary (Console Versions) In Nightfire, James Bond is pitted against megalomaniac Raphael Drake, the world's largest green-industrialist and the president of Phoenix International. The goal of Phoenix International is to rid the world of unnecessary nuclear weapons and power plants to cleanse the environment. However, Phoenix International is soon suspected to be connected to the theft of a ballistic weapons guidance microchip that was meant to be part of the United States Space Weapon Platform. When Bond starts to investigate the Japanese branch of Phoenix International, he learns of the true purpose of the international corporation: to carry out a decades-long, secret operation codenamed "Nightfire" that when completed will drastically redraw the lines that separate the countries of the world along with their governments, and plans to take over the world by taking control of all global corporations. It was followed in 2004 by Everything or Nothing, this time developed and published by Electronic Arts. Nightfire begins in Paris, where James Bond is aboard a helicopter, protecting French DGSE agent Dominique Paradis from terrorists who plan to set off a bomb during the annual New Years celebration. Bond disarms the bomb using an electromagnetic pulse, as the use of explosives would detonate the charge. After a night of passion with Dominique, Bond is sent to the Austrian castle of Raphael Drake. Drake is the head of Phoenix International, a multimillion dollar corporation which helps dismantle nuclear weapons and protect the environment. His mission involves investigating an exchange of a stolen microchip used to activate the U.S. nuclear missile defense platform in outer space. Bond can infiltrate the manor in a number of different ways, by either sneaking across the castle walls to avoid the guards, then start out on a castle wall and need to kill only one guard who opens the door leading down the stairwell, or he can enter the front gate and avoid the guards by jumping into the back of a truck and waiting out the ride, or he can just enter the front gate by foot and kill the guards he encounters. Entering by the front gate, Bond sneaks across the castle yard, picking off the guards (the player can also choose to disable the searchlights), then goes into a courtyard filled with several guards and searchlights. Bond kills at least the first two out of the three guards and dodges the searchlights(the player won't need to kill the guards if he disables the searchlights although he can if he wants, and won't need to dodge the searchlights. They are also easy to dodge if the player comes the back route from the stairwell after killing that one guard), then enters the manor disguised as a party guest and rendezvous with Dominique and CIA agent (and former lover) Zoe Nightshade. Bond then kills Drake's bodyguards who try to prevent him from getting to Drake's secret meeting, and once he gets there, photographs the exchange of the microchip and then continues killing guards and escapes from the manor with Nightshade in a cable car, shooting down an attack helicopter, piloted by Armitage Rook (Drake's security chief). He and Nightshade commandeer an armoured snowmobile, using it to escape Drake's castle compound and kill pursuers as they reach his Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, and thus to escape after killing more pursuers. MI6 sends Bond to Japan to protect Alexander Mayhew, a Phoenix security executive who promises to provide information on Phoenix's operation, codenamed Nightfire, in exchange for protection from Drake, whom he believes plans to kill him for the "little setback" in Austria. Bond manages to extract Alexander Mayhew from his home and eliminate the Yakuza assassins summoned by Drake to kill him, but Mayhew is mortally wounded by a ninja, who was waiting outside. In turn, Bond kills the ninja and goes to the aid of Mayhew. Mayhew uses his last words to tell Bond of important information stored in a computer terminal in the Phoenix headquarters. With the help of Mayhew's bodyguard, Kiko Hayashi, Bond manages to infiltrate the building and extract the data, but he is ambushed by Drake's private forces and is forced to parachute from the top of the Phoenix building to escape. The information on the computer leads Bond to a decommissioned nuclear power plant on the coast of Tokyo, where Phoenix has been contracted to cleanse the plant of hazardous nuclear material. Suspecting that Drake has his own plans for the plant, MI6 sends Bond to investigate. He infiltrates the plant and kills the snipers guarding it, then escapes with Kiko in a helicopter. Kiko reveals that her assistance was a ruse by shooting Bond with a tranquilliser. She takes him to the roof of the Phoenix building where Drake, Dominique, and several gunmen are waiting. Drake reveals his discovery that Dominique is allied with Bond and condemns her to death. Bond pushes the table over and in the ensuing altercation, Kiko kicks Dominique off the helipad, where she falls to her death through the plate-glass skylight in the lobby below. Bond escapes and kills numerous guards as he makes his way into the lobby where an Australian agent named Alura McCall drives her car through the windows and takes Bond to safety. Bond and Alura use Bond's submersible car to enter the ocean near Drake's private island. They discover that Drake is stockpiling nuclear weapons and succeed in destroying them. They hijack one of Drake's assault vehicles and eventually locate an entrance to Drake's secret underwater base where he plans to launch shuttles full of armed astronauts to take the missile platform by force. Bond tells Alura to stay near the entrance and keep in touch using the nearby communications equipment before heading into the base. He kills Drake's forces and disables the base's security systems, then encounters Rook (whose face was disfigured in the helicopter crash). Bond kills him and his men and proceeds to the launch site. As he is preparing to board one of the shuttles, Kiko appears and presses the button to collapse the gantry, sending Bond falling into the blast pit. Taking refuge in a control room, Bond survives a shuttle launch, also killing guards and two more ninjas, then returns to the boarding area. Using Kiko's tactic against her, Bond presses the button to collapse the gantry as Kiko is walking across it to her shuttle. Unable to reach a shielded room in time, Kiko is incinerated alive when the shuttle launches. Having commandeered Kiko's shuttle, Bond reaches the weapons platform. Using a laser, Bond sabotages the platform and fights off Drake's armed astronauts, making Drake unable to direct the missiles to their targets. Drake intervenes with the intention to kill Bond, but Bond prevails over Drake, sending his dead body floating off into Space. The station explodes due to a malfunctioning laser cannon; Bond manages to return to Earth using one of the space station's escape pods. Characters * *;James Bond *: The famous spy. While his face is of Pierce Brosnan, the voice is of Maxwell Caulfield. * *;Raphael Drake *: Drake is the villain of Nightfire and the head of the Phoenix corporation, he dies when Bond destroys his defence platform thus ending his plan. He was voiced by Michael Ensign. * *;Armitage Rook *: Rook is the head of security for Raphael Drake. He is first seen at a party in the French Alps hosted at Drake's chateau. When 007 and CIA agent Zoe Nightshade witness a secret meeting, Rook pursues them in a helicopter, which is subsequently shot down by Bond's Sentinel rocket launcher. Rook manages to survive and return later at Drake's Phoenix Base. There he is armed with a state of the art samurai laser. Despite this advantage, Bond overcomes and kills him. * *;Zoe Nightshade *: Zoe is a CIA agent who helps Bond in Drake's castle by getting a briefcase, and right after to escape from Drake's airfield, preparing and taxing a plane. Reprising her role from Agent Under Fire. * *;Dominique Paradis *: The main Bond girl of the game. You encounter her early on as she tries to track down a missing nuclear warhead. She finds out that it leads to Drake, and goes undercover to find out more. She is tragically killed by being thrown off the roof of Drake's building in Tokyo. She is voiced by Lena Reno. * *;Alura McCall *: Alura is an Australian agent who goes with Bond to Drake's island, helping him by detecting enemies later on in the game. She is voiced by Kimberley Davies. * *;Alexander Mayhew *: Mayhew is the owner of the Phoenix International properties in Japan, and is very close to Drake. Bond tries to protect him from Drake himself, but unfortunately, he dies from an attack from a Ninja. He is voiced by Ian Abercrombie. * *;Makiko Hayashi *: As Mayhew's personal female bodyguard, Makiko (or just "Kiko") is very skilled and loyal to him. She gets very sad about Mayhew's death, but begins to work with Drake. Kiko is killed when, as Bond's rocket launches, she is unable to reach a blast chamber. She is voiced by Tamlyn Tomita. Weapons Overall there are many weapons that the player can carry including grenades of various sorts and other types of explosives. In addition, there are numerous amounts of mounted weapons found throughout the game. To avoid copyright, names of the weapons were changed, which differed between the console and PC versions. Some weapons appear in the console version but not the PC version, and vice-versa. *Pistols **Wolfram PP7 (Walther PPK, a golden version can be unlocked. Console version only.) **Wolfram P2K (Walther P99, a golden version can be unlocked in console version only.) **Kowloon Type 40 (GLOCK 17, can fire single shots or 3-round bursts. Can also be wielded akimbo in console version only you're playing in multiplayer & are playing as a bad guy character. Cannot fire 3-round bursts if wielded this way.) **Kowloon Type 80 (GLOCK 18, a variant of the Kowloon Type 40. Console version only. after beating the game, this variant fires full-auto only.) **Raptor Magnum (Desert Eagle. In the console version, there are two variants: a .357 Magnum variant with a laser sight & 9-round capacity, & a .50AE variant with a 7-round capacity, but larger firepower.) **Golden Gun (Console version only, only in Multiplayer.) *Submachine guns **Storm M32/Storm M9-32 (Ruger MP9. A silenced variant is available in the PC version only.) **Deutsche M9K (Heckler & Koch MP5K. Console version only. Can only fire 3-round bursts, but can be silenced.) **Munitions Belga PDW90 (P90. PC version only.) *Rifles **Winter Covert/Tactical Sniper Rifle (Accuracy International AWM. A silenced version is available in the console version.) **Suisse SG5 Commando (SIG 552. There are two different variants in the console version: a silenced version with either 3-round bursts or laser-sighted single shots, and a scoped version with either full-auto or laser-sighted 3-round bursts.) **Advanced Individual Munitions System 20 (XM29 OICW. Console version only.) *Explosives **Flashbang **Pineapple grenade **Smoke Grenade **Satchel Charges (console version only) **Remote Mines (console version only) **Laser Tripmine **Militek Mark 6 Multi Grenade Launcher (Milkor MGL) **AT-420 Sentinel Laser-guided/AT-600 Scorpion Heatseek (M202 rocket launcher. The Sentinel has a laser guided module. The Scorpion exists only in the console version.) *Miscellaneous **Frinesi Auto 12 Shotgun (Franchi SPAS-12) **Korsakov K5/Seamaster UP44 (Heckler & Koch P11) **Phoenix Samurai Laser Rifle (Futuristic laser weapon loosely based off the gauss gun from non-Bond video game, Half Life.) **Delta Repeater Crossbow (Console version only.) **Phoenix Ronin (rapid-fire auto cannon inside a suitcase.) **Phoenix International X6 Annihilator (Resembles a magazine-fed gatling gun. PC version only.) Trivia * The game is also the first Bond video game sequel, as it features several characters introduced in the previous game, Agent Under Fire. It also featured a small easter egg relating to the previous game, as in the underwater level the sunken ship has the logo of Malprave industries: the company of the antagonist from Agent Under Fire. * This is also the first Bond video game since GoldenEye for which Pierce Brosnan consented to have his image used for that of 007 (in Agent Under Fire, Bond had an original face somewhat resembling a blend of the facial features of all the actors who had previously played him). * One of the weapons in the game is the "Ronin 2.0", a miniature machine gun turret that is hidden inside a metal briefcase. This weapon is quite probably a reference to the movie Ronin, in which the main characters are trying to steal a mysterious metal case. Videos Trailer Theme Song Nightfire was the first James Bond video game to have its own original theme song, "Nearly Civilized", performed by Canadian trip-hop vocalist Esthero. See also * James Bond video games External links * * James Bond Nightfire Official website * OO9's Nightfire PC website: a comprehensive guide for clans and players. __NOEDITSECTION__ Category:James Bond video games